


Brass Gotham

by brasscatkin



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-22 18:40:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9620513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brasscatkin/pseuds/brasscatkin
Summary: Snips and starts of personal Gotham head canon that I wanted to consolidate and make a little easier to find, for my own sake; highly nygmobblepot-centric. The title is utterly meaningless because I am fail at titles. It's Gotham, it's Brass Catkin's head canon, it's Brass Gotham! ::jazz hands::





	1. Oswald - Weight

At his natural, healthy weight, Oswald would be considered stocky, even chubby, but he's been wavering between _too thin_ and _much too thin_ most of his life. Perhaps the last time he weighed what he should, he was a tiny, plump-cheeked first grader, seeing the world for the first time without the filter of his mother's ferocious love. From then on, anxiety was his faithful companion, and food often seemed no more palatable or easy to chew than a lump of sticky clay, turning mealtime into a dreaded chore. Between the constant, fidgety motion of his body and his overactive mind, he blazed through whatever calories he did manage to choke down with surprising speed. He never felt hungry, but his stomach always grumbled and ached, sour with stress.

\- - - 

Fortunately for everyone involved, the first time Gabe was around to witness Oswald's blood sugar crashing, Miss Gertrud also happened to be with them on a shopping trip. Oswald had been especially short-tempered and snappy that afternoon, angrily refusing the cookies his mother kept trying to feed him from her purse, and he was sweating despite a definite chill in the air. Without warning - any warning that Gabe yet knew to look for - Oswald stopped walking, wobbling in place for a moment with a confused, almost dazed expression, before his legs crumpled and he sat down on the sidewalk, painfully hard. 

Fussing and muttering but not seeming overly worried, Miss Gertrud produced the cookies again and physically put one in Oswald's mouth, tapping under his chin until he closed his mouth and started to chew. She had Gabe help him - carry him, really - to a more dignified seat on a public bench, and then sent Gabe to a nearby shop for some orange juice. After not long at all, Oswald was looking much better. He was still a little shaky, and noticeably meek under his mother's fond scolding, but none the worse for wear. 

For the rest of his time working for Penguin, Gabe always carried a handful of sweets or even a juice box in his coat pocket, just in case. 

\- - - 

Olga did not like this Mr Nygma and his condescending smiles, or his proprietary manner in Mr Penguin's company, as if he was somehow more entitled to be there than anyone else. Mr Penguin cared for him a great deal, however, and Olga was quite fond of Mr Penguin, so she was as tolerant of the man as she could be. At first, this did not extend far beyond restraining herself from stabbing him with a carving fork when he angered her, but she did her best. 

Her opinion of Mr Nygma did soften a bit when she recognized how adept he was at getting Mr Penguin to eat. He ate slowly and precisely, keeping up a constant conversation between bites, and Mr Penguin stayed at the table much longer with him than he ever did alone. His favorite trick was asking Mr Penguin to tell him which spices were in a certain dish, getting him to take additional mouthfuls for the sake of guessing. 

She even began to smile at Mr Nygma - occasionally - when she noticed that several of Mr Penguin's suits needed to be let out at the waist.


	2. Oswald - Clothing

When Oswald was young, too young to be left alone in the apartment, Gertrud sometimes had no choice but to bring him with her to the club where she worked, waiting tables and occasionally - oh, very occasionally - singing with the band. Her boss understood her predicament, even fed the boy gratis from the kitchen as he did his employees, but he didn’t bother to hide his irritation and Oswald was such a sensitive child, Gertrud fretted that he might think himself at fault somehow for causing a problem. Hoping to circumvent that, she treated those nights as special events, like a sort of mother and son date, even if she couldn’t spend all of her time with him. She would dress him up in his best (and only) suit - immaculate but threadbare, too short already at the wrists and ankles - his badly worn, second-hand wingtips, and cufflinks she made herself out of bent paperclips and the “gems” from a broken pair of earrings, and they would glide into the club arm in arm with a flurry of happy giggles.

Though she seldom scolded him for anything, it was around this time Gertrud began worrying aloud over how often and how long she would catch Oswald staring at women. He could never make her understand that the women held little to no interest for him, that he found most people uninteresting, regardless of gender. What caught his eye and held it was the endless variety of their wardrobe, the way it made his gut ache with wanting. Though honestly, it wasn’t the dresses themselves he wanted but the extravagant fabric choices, the thoughtful construction, accentuating the shape of the body before drowning it again in the unashamed vanity of sequins and feathers and cascades of jewelry. The men’s suits in all their sameness faded to smudges of dull, nameless color beside them. 

Oswald would pinch himself through the drab sleeve of the suit his mother could barely afford, to remind himself of the nothing he was and the great man he had to become one day. Wealthy enough to gift his mother with everything she gave up to raise him and a thousand times more. Powerful enough to do what he liked and no one would dare to tell him he shouldn’t.


	3. Edward - Normal

For as long as Edward can remember, who he is at any given moment is defined by his fraught relationship with the concept of normality, the want and the disdain. His difficulties stem largely from physical and mental abuse suffered as a child, but he blocked those memories, thereby sparing himself trauma but denying himself an answer as to why his brain is forever at war with itself, split in two pieces (more, at times) that refuse to be a coherent whole. He's an answer without a riddle, and it's a constant, maddening, unscratchable itch inside him.

He has this sort of .. slider bar inside his head, and his is not the only hand able to adjust it.

One one end, _he hates himself for his inability to be normal, to simply blend in with the mundane herd, to accept the inevitable judgment - he deserves it, he deserves so much more - and not cower like a child as the nameless/faceless monster looms over his bed_.

On the other end, **he hates everyone else for their inability to recognize his superiority, accept the magnificence of his intellect, to offer the appropriate adulation - he deserves it, he deserves so much more - and cower at his feet before they would dream of raising a hand to harm or oppose him.**

Sometimes, he can find a relative peace balanced between the poles, where each side whispers in not-words he can almost ignore. The closer to one extreme he drifts based on the events of each day - closer to the self-hating side, almost always - the more the Other opposes him, taunts him in his own voice, twists his own mouth in the mirror to a cutting curve. Sometimes, when he's tired, so very tired of the unsolvable equation that is his life, it's easiest to just ... sink, to let the Other have his way for a while. Sometimes, he wishes he would never rise up again.

Many a concerned caregiver, advocate or teacher had suggested therapy in the years before he purged every official document relating to himself, every single one of them, silenced the last pitiful gasps of poor little Edward Nashton before forgetting him again, this time entirely. No part of him was pleased with the idea, though some were more adamant than others. Together their answer was a cacophony ...

_My bed, this cup of_ _bone, is my prison and my throne / I've slept but never stilled; plotted, never killed / but if ever out I'm spilled, what is lost can't be refilled / what_ ... did you know the ancient Japanese art of Kintsugi is to repair broken pottery with a mix of lacquer and powdered precious metal, often gold, to highlight the unique beauty of ... **they'll carve their jealousy into you, create the flaws they need to see, claw you open and hollow you out and crush the spark inside you under their boots** ...

... his body could only express with a tired smile and a shake of the head.


End file.
